Connecting the Dots in Virtual Learning

Adult learners come equipped with many learning styles and needs as they move through respective academic programs.  Many adults are entering the world of academic in their middle 30’s and even 40’s. After a ten or twenty year’s hiatus from the University setting, it is not always simple to adjust or adapt to a new learning platform or setting.  Being able to assess adult learners’ multifaceted needs is a skill that instructors must learn to apply in the world of virtual learning and on ground campus settings.  Learning involves several sensory domains, such as thinking, feeling, hearing, and  touching.  For example, some learners are visual, some audio, and others kinesthetic.  There are a percentage of learners that are a combination of all these styles.  Thinking critically about how learners respond to teaching instructions, course concepts, reading materials, and how they answer discussion exchanges can provide significant information about learning style and level of comfort in the online classroom.

Instructors can be creative in how they broach daily course objectives and deliver complex and often challenging information.  For example, making learning fun and exciting doesn’t have to be cumbersome or difficult.  Instructors have the opportunity to express and deliver their level of expertise in what they know based on their practice settings and disciplinary skill set.  If you think about how this can be accomplished, consider taking the perspective on how at one time, instructors were students who were required to complete an intricate practicum or training program that may have been the hallmark of their practical learning experience.

Instrumental learning is about taking what was most informative, challenging, exciting, and pertinent and turning it into something measurable and meaningful.  Fashioning course objective materials into the lives of our students is what draws attention and maintains interest.  How can this be done adroitly?  Here are some examples that I have used and continue to implement in my virtual courses that have shown to be successful and reliable forms of techniques to motivate and engage adult learners.

          Use of Colorful Power Point Presentations that have fun visual slides

          Relating difficult theories to real life examples and using visual aids to communicate the theoretical associations to behaviors and thinking patterns

          Identifying learning styles and useful developing tools to engage all adult learners

          Using simple questionnaires or polls in the classroom to gather student ideas and to scale level of comfort

          Positive affirmations in lecture notes and announcements

          Validation and Recognition of students that go above and beyond to assist their peers in learning

          Highlighting core course concepts that are relevant to exams and quizzes

          Directing attention to the ground rules and basics by posting friendly course announcements and helpful tips to stay successful.

Success involves synergistic components.  Staying connected, interactive, and available are all mechanisms for modeling positive behaviors in the classroom and coaching students to go that extra step.  It takes skill, patience, time, and passion.  I use the word passion because that is what I believe to be the cardinal force in success.  If one has a passion for the materials one teachers, then, that passion is what will reflect in attitude and how one delivers curriculum to students.